Let Scholar-Athletes Quit
the Charade

This guest editorial was published in the Raleigh,
N.C. News and Observer on December 15, 1985.

Lewis Carroll, a
logician better known for "Alice in Wonderland," held that a person is often
convinced a course of action is right because he cannot think of an alternative.
His dictum applies-to the conflict over the place of athletics in higher
education.

Few people realize
how long collegiate athletic abuse has persisted. Football as we would recognize
it was first played in 1875 by Harvard and Yale. From the start, Harvard viewed
athletics as amateur while Yale viewed them as professional, and the problem of
athletic abuses germinated quickly. As early as 1885, The Harvard Athletic
Committee made attempts to control them and even banned football altogether.

Because those
attempts failed, we delude ourselves by believing that similar attempts will
succeed now, for as in 1885 money propels collegiate sports toward
professionalism. The desire of the poor for increased opportunities is also a
propellant. So no matter what academic requirements are mandated, ways will be
found to circumvent and weaken them.

Strict standards
will always be opposed by athletic departments pressured to produce winning
teams and by the disadvantaged, and any compromise that produces weak standards
will merely perpetuate the abuses.

Further, the place
of the athlete in higher education is very peculiar. What ridicule would our
colleges be subjected to if they required students with academic ability to
demonstrate athletic talent by making the third team in some major sport in
order to graduate?

Yet that is exactly
what we subject the collegiate athlete to. What makes us think that a person
with athletic ability but no demonstrated intellect belongs in a college and can
graduate if he puts his mind to it?

Talents abound but
no one possesses them all. The scholar-athlete is a rare species.

To recruit the
athlete who lacks intellectual ability subverts the academic ideal, and to
recruit the intelligent student who lacks much athletic ability makes a mockery
of sport.

The marriage of
athletics to academics has never been fully sanctioned. Athletic programs rarely
get governmental financial support. This has itself brought about abuse. Coaches
and athletic directors must be fund raisers. People who contribute want favored
treatment. Losing teams have difficulty attracting backers, so coaches must
produce winners, regardless of the moral and academic price that must be paid.

But it is facile
merely to propose that athletes who cannot meet minimum admission standards not
be allowed to matriculate. We all know that the only road to success for many of
them runs through the college campus.

It's equally facile
to propose that these athletes continue to be admitted. Not only are they under
terrifying academic pressure, they often are exploited by the school for their
athletic abilities. So the solution lies in building another road for the
unintellectual but talented athlete to travel.

Models are readily
available. Tennis clubs exist that promote youth-tennis, sponsor tournaments,
and build champions. Major league baseball has fall-team affiliates where
younger players can demonstrate their talents and acquire the experience needed
to play in the big leagues. Why don't we have similar institutions for
basketball and football?

Two reasons are
evident: the money and notoriety our colleges get from this unnatural marriage
and the money needed from private sources to finance such alternatives.

How can our colleges
be convinced that they do not need this venal system to maintain the income
acquired from major sports? And how can civic organizations and private
entrepreneurs be convinced that alternative institutions can be profitable?

The fear of the
entrepreneur is easy to understand. Minor league baseball is a money-losing
proposition. Tennis, the exception, requires considerably less overhead, and the
financial success of collegiate sports does not alleviate the fear, for fan
support of collegiate teams is based more on institutional loyalties than on
love of sport.

Without
such committed spectators, high-overhead team sports are not profitable. But
with sufficient private and civic resources, enough teams unaffiliated with
colleges could be assembled to be compete with collegiate teams. If colleges
played not only each other but non-collegiate teams as well, fans support could
be sustained. Colleges could maintain their programs for true scholar-athletes
and their incomes. And the nonintellectual athlete could demonstrate his ability
without the pain of being where he knows, and we know, he doesn't belong.
Academic standards could be maintained, and athletes uninterested in college
would not have to endure the academic duress and institutional exploitation they
now do.